


Whispers

by paraparadigm



Series: The Errant Souls Archive [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Character Study, Dibella - Freeform, Gen, Language, Lore - Freeform, Nine Divines, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paraparadigm/pseuds/paraparadigm
Summary: When the Aedra speak, one has little choice but to listen.A series of one-shots following the early life of the Sybil of Dibella (or my interpretation of her in Always Read the Fine Print)
Relationships: OC/OC
Series: The Errant Souls Archive [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744585
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	1. A Garland of Signs

When the Aedra speak, one has little choice but to listen.

Though, of course, the Aedra do not speak. Not, in any case, in the language of men and mer, for it would be as impossible for them to fit their intent within such rudimentary sound sequences as it would be for the wind to trap itself in a jar.

Their will is a whisper in the clouds, a condensation of phenomena, arranged in endlessly expanding permutations. The signs unfold, and she obeys, for what can one do but obey — there is no self that preexists such becomings, and she only comes into being in answer: her eyes see, her ears hear, and her legs follow. 

The slanted fractured light filtering through the mosaic of stained glass is only one link of this wordless conversation, but it is as good a place to start as any. It is the moment that, in its unfolding, will take her across the Jerall mountains, through a land that will, within the next few years, shake with the Empire’s betrayal, and bleed with the amputation of its faith. It will take her through thick forests, and wind-swept tundra, over glacier-covered peaks, jewel-painted with refracted auroras. Eventually, it will compel her into a ruler’s bed, among other places — for the Divines never order, they invite, and only a fool would presume such invitations to be volitional. 

In the Imperial City, the rays’ ruby digits brush against the spine of a book, and what can she do but retrieve it from its shelf, her palm brushing off the downy dust, leaving behind an imprint, like a memento. She is already filled with the certainty of the Aedra’s gaze and awake to Her will. The book is incidental — and it is fated. It could have been anything else, but it is this. 

_I see, and therefore I follow._

It is a book on the traditional crafts of Bruma, and so she has her directive.

When the whisper falls silent, she waits, for the Aedra do not _give_ signs, their signs are a given, a multitude. “Dibella, open my heart to the beauty in which you dwell.” Her prayers are only ever trained within. It is not a guiding voice she seeks, but erasure — for all other possible paths to fade so that only one might be illuminated.

From Bruma, she follows the thread the Divine weaves for her — in clouds, and snow flurries, in the cries of early spring birds, in traded glances, in overheard fragments of conversation that bear the Divine’s meaning unwittingly. She is not the first mystic to walk with the gait of a madman, nor the last. She has been called worse things.

And so, she has her directive.

In a tiny village buried in the Jeralls, so small it has neither name nor placeholder on a map, and the locals simply call it “Stonefalls,” or else home, she comes across a small shrine to her Goddess. On it, two gold coins, a wilted thistle, a bowl of milk, small pots of pigment: lapis blue, alkanet red, copper green. If she lets her eyes drift out of focus, the objects dissolve into the indefinite shape of a beckoning hand. North, then.

And so, she has her directive.

A Talos shrine, and those who worship in fresh secrecy. The moonlight shines upon a supplicant. He is neither old nor young, neither fierce nor powerfully built, neither plain nor beautiful (in the way men sometimes are) — but the moonlight in his hair is polished silver, and the song he hums mimics the first notes of a familiar chant, before wandering along the trail of its own melody. 

And so, she has her directive.

He is from a place called Rorikstead, and he is returning to it after years of travel. The Goddess weaves their paths into a single lattice, and for a time, they walk apace.

For six months, the whispers keep her rooted to the earth, to the cycle of seasons, to the warmth of a hearth, to the touch of a lover whose name she carries like sugar candy tucked under her tongue.

And then, one morning, the garland of the Aedra’s will unspools again, and it is deafening and blinding, so undeniably immanent she freezes at the sight of it. Her Sister, a stranger in robes that mirror her own. A quiet smile, and a _“I wondered when and where we would meet.”_

And so, she has her directive.

There is no room for goodbyes on the chain of signs her Divine drapes around her neck — like a noose, like the most precious of necklaces — and so she leaves without them.

A city of birds and bulbous blue roofs, of songs and lutes and fishmongers, and she sees the portents everywhere, in the blooms of nightshades that bow their heads in the light breeze, in the way the light dances on the tremulous surface of a puddle, suddenly fractured by a soldier’s boot, in the retreating armored back, and the piercing, fleeting beauty of a golden butterfly dancing briefly above the warrior’s helmet.

All temples are familiar, and so are all palaces, for the language of power is universal. She stands in the lavish courtyard, in the shadow of a column, a young woman at the cusp of adulthood, clad in a drab habit. Her wrists are bare, not yet adorned with silver. 

A man addresses the gathered crowd, with anger and grief in his voice. He is not yet old, but his youth is long behind him, and he speaks with the weight of years and experience and the responsibility of a kingdom unmoored in the tides of history. He speaks of faith, mostly, but it is not his words she is listening to. A shaft of sunlight falls on him like a beacon, and in it, he stands golden as a statue.

She does not question the Aedra’s directives, for to question would imply the existence of a querent. She comes into being only as a link of the garland, but even a link knows its place, and her place is here.


	2. In the Dark Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bard and an acolyte

He comes to her in the dark hours, when the town crier has fallen silent. He is not one of her ordinary supplicants, for such regularity would presuppose a habit. With time (though she does not calculate such things) his visits multiply, accumulated into repetitions too unpredictable to form a pattern. He has the merit of arriving between the whispers of her Goddess. 

With him, the signs fall silent.

His purse is full, his smile is empty, his words shapeshift, though through no Daedric gift—this talent is all his, and she lets him hone it over months and years counted by the clinking of coins deposited under her floorboards. She waits in Solitude, though rarely lonely, for her Divine speaks softly between each syllable. His ears are trained for harsher sounds, but only silence greets him. When she was younger, she would have pitied him, but she is not one to lay a claim on others’ dignity.

He does not seek her wisdom, nor does she offer it, for unwelcome gifts accrue a debt that suffers no repayment. She does not allow for their arrangement to be one-sided, but what she receives in exchange, she does not keep. 

He trains his teeth on her tenacity: a bard, he says, with a writ to prove it, with adulation waiting for him in every hold. He is not a man to sing of others’ heroism, though he does not know this yet. 

He holds grand plans for his homeland. He lists the chinks he would see mended in great detail, like tracing circles in the dirt, but words leave him restless, and long after the mattress loses the imprint their bodies left behind, he paces the room and rants. 

She stands at the window, as she always does, waiting for her visitors to take their leave and follow their own threads. Some always linger, feckless and unhearing, and he is one of them. Over months, the silver bracelets on her wrists multiply.

He does not visit her to simply satisfy Dibella's calls, nor seeks her Divine's wisdom—whatever else he may claim—and it amuses her to point out his inconsistencies. What passes between them is what passes between all rivals: the subtle tug-of-war of language. When they are done, in the faint glow of the auroras, his words hold only mundane meaning, but on his tongue, they gain new echoes. She adds them to her cup, a bitter tincture. 

He is an upstart, and his devotion falls accordingly. He seeks to wrestle her secret from her, but it is not yet hers to lose.

It is not a friendship, but it could be seen as such, in a certain light.


End file.
